artifactapi/docs/common/caching.md

Caching and classification (all remotes)

Every proxied request on a remote is classified as denied, immutable or mutable. The class picks the storage path and the freshness TTL.

Fields

Field	Meaning
patterns	Allowlist of regexes. Empty allows every path; otherwise a non-matching path is denied (403).
blocklist	Regexes; a match is denied (403).
immutable_patterns	Regexes forcing a path immutable.
mutable_patterns	Regexes forcing a path mutable.
immutable_ttl	Seconds an immutable path stays fresh. 0 = forever.
mutable_ttl	Seconds a mutable path stays fresh. 0 also means never expires. Omitted on create, it defaults to 3600; omitted on update, the stored value is kept.
sync_interval	github_rpm/github_deb/github_alpine only. Seconds between background release re-scans, at a stable per-remote offset. Unset (0) re-scans no more often than mutable_ttl.
check_mutable	When a mutable path's mutable_ttl expires, sends a conditional HEAD (If-None-Match) with the stored upstream ETag. A 304 re-arms the TTL and serves the stored copy; anything else refetches in full. The ETag is kept for max(10 × mutable_ttl, 7 days), re-armed on each 304, so idle paths age out. It is only stored when check_mutable is set and mutable_ttl is non-zero, and never for immutable paths.
stale_on_error	On an upstream network error, serve the stored copy instead of failing.
serve_stale	rpm/deb/alpine virtual members only. When a virtual re-merges, use this member's previous index at once and refresh it in the background; the next merge picks up the refresh. The first merge still waits, and so does any merge once the previous index is over an hour old, so a member that keeps failing surfaces its error. Default false.
quarantine_enabled / quarantine_days	Refuses immutable artifacts published less than quarantine_days (default 3) ago. See Quarantine.
mirrorlist / mirror_strategy	rpm/deb/alpine only. Upstream pool is [base_url] + mirrorlist; round_robin (default) rotates the starting mirror, least_conn starts at the one with the fewest in-flight requests. Network errors and 5xx fail over to the next mirror; other statuses return as-is.

Precedence

The first rule that matches wins:

1. blocklist matches: denied
2. patterns is non-empty and nothing matches: denied
3. immutable_patterns matches: immutable
4. mutable_patterns matches: mutable
5. the provider's built-in Classify says mutable: mutable
6. anything else: immutable

So blocklist beats the allowlist, and immutable_patterns beats mutable_patterns. Either user list overrides the built-in rules. GET and HEAD both apply this order.

Matching rules

• Regexes are Go regexp, matched unanchored (MatchString). Add ^ or $ yourself when you need them.
• They match the path after /api/v1/remote/<name>/, without a leading slash, e.g. 9/BaseOS/x86_64/os/repodata/repomd.xml.
• The query string is not part of the path. It is dropped and not forwarded upstream.
• create and update reject an invalid regex in patterns, blocklist, mutable_patterns, immutable_patterns or ban_tags with a 400. Only invalid regexes already stored before that check are skipped at match time.

Lifecycles

	Immutable	Mutable
Stored as	content-addressed blob (sha256), streamed	per-path index object, buffered and rewritten by the provider
Fresh for	immutable_ttl (0 = forever)	mutable_ttl
After expiry	refetched from upstream	revalidated with If-None-Match when check_mutable is set and an ETag is stored, else refetched
Upstream down	stale_on_error serves the stored copy and re-arms the TTL; an open circuit breaker always serves stale if a copy exists, else 503	same

Concurrent misses on one path share a fetch lock. Waiters poll the store for up to 5s instead of all going upstream.

Quarantine

With quarantine_enabled, an uncached immutable path whose upstream copy was published less than quarantine_days ago answers 403 and is not cached:

{"error": "quarantined: published 2026-10-24T09:00:00Z, available from 2026-10-27T09:00:00Z",
 "published": "2026-10-24T09:00:00Z", "available": "2026-10-27T09:00:00Z"}

• quarantine_days must be at least 1 when quarantine is enabled.
• The publish time is the upstream Last-Modified header (capped at now), else the first time artifactapi was asked for the path.
• If that first-seen lookup fails, the path answers 503 with Retry-After instead.
• Mutable paths (indexes, metadata) are never quarantined.
• Paths already cached keep serving, including ones cached before quarantine was enabled.
• A virtual redirects to the member that owns the path, so its 403 reaches the client. A goproxy virtual probing for an unlisted version skips a quarantining member and only redirects to it when no other member serves the version.
• Indexes still list fresh versions, so a client resolving "latest" may pick one and get the 403.

Eviction

curl -X DELETE https://artifactapi.example.com/api/v2/remotes/<name>/objects/<path>
curl -X DELETE https://artifactapi.example.com/api/v2/remotes/<name>/objects/<dir>/*

• Evict drops the artifact row, the index object and the Redis TTL and ETag keys, so the next request goes upstream whatever the class or TTL.
• Deleting a remote drops its Redis TTL and ETag keys, so a re-created remote of the same name starts cold.
• A single-path evict takes the fetch lock first, so an in-flight fetch can't re-cache the path. It returns 503 if the lock stays busy.
• A wildcard must end in <dir>/* and takes no lock.
• Returns 204, or 404 for an unknown remote.

Examples

Bodies for POST https://artifactapi.example.com/api/v2/remotes.

GitHub release assets through a generic remote, allowlisted:

{"name": "github", "package_type": "generic", "base_url": "https://github.com",
 "immutable_ttl": 0, "mutable_ttl": 7200,
 "patterns": ["^mikefarah/yq/releases/download/.*/yq_linux_amd64$"]}

rpm remote: repodata/* and repomd.xml are mutable by default, so only the TTLs are needed:

{"name": "almalinux", "package_type": "rpm", "base_url": "https://repo.almalinux.org/almalinux",
 "immutable_ttl": 0, "mutable_ttl": 3600, "check_mutable": true, "stale_on_error": true}

Force a moving path mutable, e.g. branch tarballs on generic:

{"mutable_patterns": ["/archive/refs/heads/.*\\.tar\\.gz$"], "mutable_ttl": 600}

Built-in classification per type

Each type's page lists its auto-detected mutable and immutable paths: alpine, alpine github, ansible, cargo, deb, deb github, docker, generic, gems, goproxy, helm, npm, nuget, puppet, pypi, rpm, rpm github, terraform, vcs.